D&D 5E Which was the most recent Wizards adventure you consider a classic?

[Chaltab]

Descent into Avernus is the nadir of Wizards' horde of freelancers strategy, and from what I've heard, was a very, very troubled production. It's got a great concept, but while the conclusion reads as if the players have a lot of freedom in the middle act, it plays as some linear stories without the deal-making you'd expect where you could go between factions and play them against each other. I can see some groups connect with it, but for me it's just not working.

I think you can play it with a lot more freedom, but it's not written in a way that truly facilitates that. It helps that I've seen some really good actual plays of it, including one DMed ENWorlder @Burnside

The behind-the-scenes issues were definitely part of it. Like it originally had nothing to do with Baldur's Gate but then someone looking to maximize brand tie-ins decided that DIA had to tie into Baldur's Gate 3, so the entire Baldur's Gate section (which is like the first 4 levels of the book) was added in after the fact.

 

[ECMO3]

Witchlights one of those niche products.

You either buy into it and love it or it's not your thing and leaves you cold. For me it's the latter. I got my copy for free and cant fairly rate it.

Witchlight for me didn't seem a lot different than other adventures. I know when it came out there was all this talk about how different it was and you could go through it with no combat at all. But for me and my group in play it was like any other (and we did go into slaughter mode a few times).

Some of the people I play with at another table said it was the same for them.

The only thing that felt unique and wierd about it was the "good" protagonist Displacer beast and that kind of thing seems to be getting common now with most creatures not having an "evil" archetype or culture.

 

[ECMO3]

My observation of Out of the Abyss, Tomb of Annihilation, Rime of the Frostmaiden, and other older 5e adventures is that in all those adventures there are core concepts that don’t work together once a GM is “under the hood.” There’s brilliant pockets of ideas, but they lack cohesive connective tissue.

I would agree. The tomb and the jungle in TOA for example are kind of two separate adventures.

 

[Burnside]

I think you can play it with a lot more freedom, but it's not written in a way that truly facilitates that. It helps that I've seen some really good actual plays of it, including one DMed ENWorlder @Burnside

The behind-the-scenes issues were definitely part of it. Like it originally had nothing to do with Baldur's Gate but then someone looking to maximize brand tie-ins decided that DIA had to tie into Baldur's Gate 3, so the entire Baldur's Gate section (which is like the first 4 levels of the book) was added in after the fact.

Thanks for the kind words. When we finished that campaign, I read the adventure and I was taken aback at some of the issues our DM had fixed (without our knowing) to make it more cohesive.

The Baldur's Gate section, as written, absolutely seems Frankensteined on there to me; it would be much easier to invest the player characters in the fate of Elturel if the book spent as much time tying them to Elturel as it does to Baldur's Gate (or, alternately, if rescuing Baldur's Gate, and not Elturel, was the focus of the last 8 levels worth of content.)

The Path of Devils vs Path of Demons as written is one of those WotC design deals where they want the players to make a big dramatic choice, but supply zero info to inform that choice, so instead of feeling dramatic it feels like a random coin flip. It actually IS an important choice, but for reasons that are left needlessly opaque to the players. Our DM went the sandbox route with it, which I now see others have done, which is the right move I think.

The book also includes a lot of mechanisms for involuntarily turning the adventurers evil or compromising or corrupting them in some way, but it really relies heavily on altruism as the motivation for pursuing its central goal and offers little to no motivation for evil characters to continue its main quest (again, something that might have been mitigated if the PCs had backgrounds and histories that tied them to Elturel instead of Baldur's Gate). It's not doing the DM any favors to offer all of these ways to turn the characters evil but not really offering much in the way of suggestions or support for why they would then continue the adventure.

 

[SteveC]

That's a really interesting question. The only one I have run that I thought was worthy of that title was Curse of Strahd. I didn't care for the remaster of it, so I'm talking about the original 5E version. I think that's a little questionable because it's largely just Ravenloft for 5E but it was really popular with my group.

I haven't played it yet but one of my DM friends tells be that Tomb of Annihilation is really good. That's coming from someone I trust the judgement of so I'll go with it. The other ones? Read them, tried playing a few and found them meh at best.
'

 

[Celebrim]

Tomb of Annihilation has its moments and Curse of Strahd is a respectful homage to the original classic, but I honestly think the most recent classic has to be "The Wild Beyond the Witchlight". It has a few problems but it also has an originality to it that I haven't seen in an adventure since the 1980s.

 

[MerricB]

Thanks for the kind words. When we finished that campaign, I read the adventure and I was taken aback at some of the issues our DM had fixed (without our knowing) to make it more cohesive.

Yeah. It's why I distrust player reviews of adventures - they're really reviewing their DM.

Stone cold classics can be ruined by the wrong DM, and disastrous piles of writing can be rescued by a good DM.

And looking with DM eyes at an adventure you played and seen all the changes made can be so enlightening as to what a good DM can do!

Cheers!

 

[SteveC]

Yeah. It's why I distrust player reviews of adventures - they're really reviewing their DM.

This is such an important point! We played Dragon Heist and had a great time. I wondered why everyone tends to be negative on it. And then I picked up a copy on sale (after we were done!) and found that my DM had done some very heavy lifting on it. And this was his first time running a campaign, so it was even more impressive!

 

[MerricB]

My general feeling is that Descent into Avernus was planned as a sandbox, but it couldn't be brought together, so the Paths were introduced to make a playable way through. I think a lot of the sandbox stuff didn't make the final cut, which makes it a lot harder to run as a sandbox - the demon and devil lords tend to not have as much information as you'd want in a sandbox.

I also think one of the most horrendous decisions with Descent was the "no mapping of Avernus" clause. Without a map, there's no spatial positioning. Without that, you can't make any meaningful decisions as to travel, or how one force is threatening another.

Having two enemies be neighbours creates tension. There are no neighbours in Avernus.

The basic idea of the adventure is really, really good. Go to Avernus, make deals with the various factions, confront Zariel, and have one of several endings (good or bad). But the "make deals with factions" basically got cut out of the finished product, and it's the meat of it all!

 

[Knaves Quill]

This is such an important point! We played Dragon Heist and had a great time. I wondered why everyone tends to be negative on it. And then I picked up a copy on sale (after we were done!) and found that my DM had done some very heavy lifting on it. And this was his first time running a campaign, so it was even more impressive!

One of my players when I ran Dragon Heist is planning on running it soon, and he messaged me one day with various questions boiling down to "What the hell is this book?" I told him how I had to engineer a whole gang war sub-system, used multiple villain at once, and filled out the section of the book before part 3 (the BOOM part).

It was rewarding, but man...